1. Medical Philosophy, Ethics and Problems of Homosexuality. The various concepts of sexuality were invented by psychopathology in the late 19th Century. In the DSM-III-R of 1987, homosexuality suddenly became normal from abnormal. However transgender remains an illness, as it was before. It is only a political problem. Another important problem is about AIDS. In Japan, there is discrimination between AIDS caused by medicine and AIDS caused by other factors. 2. Homosexuality as Thought : Situation of modern French Thought. In France, The "May Revolution" of 1968 caused the foundation of a new university : Paris 8th (Vancennes). One of its founders, Rene Scherer began his first lecture on sexuality in the faculty of Philosophy. His partner, Guy Hocquenghem, founded FHAR. Recently, Red and Black-Homosexuals in France after 1968 by F.Martel was published. However, Prof. Scherer has told me it is a defective book. 3. Thought of G. Hocquenghem : concerning homosexual desire. The originality of Hocquenghem's thought seems to lie in his idea of forming "a group of subjects" through the anus. The creation of relations among others by anality stands against ideas of couples. Being homosexual is not a means to attain self-identification, but a means to be out of self, to become a foreigner. It is also an escape to an infinite drifting from a stiff identity. 4. The Voice of M. Foucault : Homosexuality as a form of existence. Foucault's thought about homosexuality summarizes two points. First, to be homosexual is not correct ; to become homosexual is correct. He takes "gay" to create a new form of existence. Therefore, he does not think coming-out to be inevitable. Secondly, his problem is to begin to love among individuals. It means that "I" is more essential than sexuality. Here there seems to be fascination for passivity. 5. Conclusion : In Japan, they say "gay" is already out of fashion : now "queer" replaces it. However, such nomenclature is only a matter of fashion. To my regret, regular studies on gayness or queerness are not carried out in Japan. Now, it is necessary to study homosexuality as thought. That means to meet various thoughts not only to introduce and imitate them but to get involved in them : to have a mind of "hospitality". That is a critically needed task in Japan.

After briefly reviewing the philosophical controversy on abortion, I will introduce Don Marquis' "future-like-ours" argument and its various critiques. Marquis insists that (1) it is seriously immoral to kill us because killing deprives us of our valuable futures, and (2) a human fetus has a future like ours, therefore (3) it is seriously immoral to kill a human fetus. His argument is very simple but plausible, and not easy to rebut. Possible objections to his argument are (1) an objection from negligence of the women's viewpoint, (2) a ruductio ad absurdum objection from contraception, (3) an objection from metaethical analysis of "loss" and "deprivation", (4) an objection from personal identity and non-similarity of a fetus and us, and (5) a metaethical objection from relation of value and desire. I argue that objection (5), which relies on the desire account of value, is most powerful, if we are to account for modifications and qualifications of "desire", such that desire should be interpreted as "dispositional desire" and desires should be "rational and well-informed". But these objections also have a significant burden of philosophical justification.

The objective of this paper is to discuss the reasons that some individuals in the United States refuse to be vaccinated, focusing on those reasons usually described as "conscientious." This paper discusses current compulsory vaccination practices and the most common categories of reasons objectors in the United States give for refusing vaccinations (on medical, religious, or philosophical grounds, the latter two of which are often described as conscientious reasons). Possible ways to handle refusals are examined from the perspectives of the three categories of refusals mentioned above, the particularities of vaccination within biomedical ethics, and public health ethics discussions. Although refusals based on divergent perceptions of risk are commonly classified as refusals for philosophical (personal) reasons, objectors in this category are trying to present medical reasons, which do not convince experts. Even if experts try to persuade the public by presenting scientific evidence, there remain fundamental difficulties in convincing objectors. Refusals for religious reasons are to a certain extent established historically, but few major religious groups nowadays explicitly refuse vaccinations per se. Refusals in this category are not necessarily plainly "religious." Certain refusals on religious grounds, including those based on repugnance for the use of components derived from aborted fetuses, can be avoided by technological advances in the medical field. Refusals based on philosophical reasons should be handled in more sensitive, individualized ways than they are now. The inquiry ventured in this paper is important for Japanese society in that it deals with general questions surrounding the contradictions between the autonomy principle, which is paramount in biomedical ethics, and the compulsory schema of public health policy, and asks whether and how the different qualities or characters of decisions regarding health care and public health should be translated into practice.

The German philosopher Juergen Habermas, who emphasizes the significance of communicative rationality in constructing social theories, has recently made active proposals in bioethics. To the extent that he insists on duties analogous to moral ones with regard to the moral status of animals, he remains in step with the opinions of some English-speaking ethical theorists. Indeed his acceptance of communications between men and other animals is consistent in part with the position of Peter Singer, who represents such opinions and objects to differentiating between humans and animals with reference to moral duties. However, Habermas fears that valuing various lives only for their sensible capacities, regardless of special differences, might result in assignment of priority to the lives of healthy higher animals over those of handicapped babies, and therefore maintains that we are after all different from the other animals in moral status. This conclusion by Habermas is built on the philosophical edifice of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, the author of the Dialectic of enlightenment, in accordance with the idea that we should not instrumentalize the living activities of humen beings. This is why he insists that research in reproductive medicine should be carefully considered. Accordingly, his attitude toward bioethics results in a kind of anthropocentrism, though we must not overlook the need for expansion of communicative relasions between humans and other animal species. The opinions of Habermas on bioethics have affected the ethics of nature, as outlined by Angelika Krebs and Martin Seel under the influence of Frankfurt School in the contemporary Germany.

With regard to the social welfare of disabled persons, I will consider the relationship between feelings of pity for them and discrimination against them. In Japan, most people today who have not been in close contact with disabled persons feel pity for them. Is this feeling of pity an expression of discrimination against them? In this paper, I will describe and analyze the nature of this feeling and make the following points: 1) A feeling is experienced passively, so we cannot modify it at the same time that we are feeling it. Therfore, feelings of pity for disabled persons are not in themselves equivalent to discrimination against them. It is possible to interpret them as such, but this interpretation only presents discrimination as a problem without a solution. 2) Referring to Arbert Memmi's definition of discrimination in context of racism, I will consider the way in which discrimination is the result of a relationship between individuals and society. Discrimination shuld be understood at the social level, namely in its relationship to social structure and social organization. Only then can we find measures to resolve it. 3) Pity for persons with disabilities is no more than a groundless conviction held by non-disabled persons, and is a reflection of the lack of communication between these two groups. 4) We should start from the fact that people, both with and without disabilities live in the same world at the same time, and thus learn to naturally accept heterogeneuty and variety in people.

Viktor von Weizsacker's significance as an originator of "anthropological medicine" and as a critic of medicine oriented solely to the scientific-biological standpoint encourages us in the present critical situation caused in connection with many problems in medical ethics to seek an adequate paradigm of medical ethics in his works. True, he wrote no systematic ethics of anthropological medicine as such. But his 'Euthanasia' and Experiments on Human Beings (1947) was a salient contribution to the foundation of that field, since in it he asserts that the real, though invisible, defendant on the Nuremberg bench was no particular doctor, but the general spirit of scientific-biological medicine, and declares his guiding principle that the solidarity and mutuality of doctor and patient should guide medical practice. Therefore, in this article I intend to describe the origin of the medical ethics inherent in Weizsacker's "Medical Anthropology" (Medizinische Anthropologie) where he formulates the concepts of solidarity and mutuality. First I try to show clearly how he proves, with the help of the principle of solidarity, that there was no "as such justification" for the 'euthanasia' and human experiments Nazi doctors had put into practice, and further how he tested, in every morally doubtful case, whether it complied with the law of mutuality. Secondly I will clarify in what kind of context medical practice must occur under the law of solidarity, if one is taking the law of mutuality seriously in the association between doctor and patient. And thirdly after showing that the concept of "the solidarity of death" tends to reduce various aspects of the personal and social structure of death to an abstract common denominator, I will consider the meaning of Weizsacker's utterance that the order of life is a fusion of "the solidarity of death" and "the mutuality of life."

Modern Japanese traditional medicine established in the mid-18th century suffered devastating damage due to the execution of the Medical Law (established in 1873) as an integral part Japan's modernization policies. Today, Japanese traditional medicine is a counterculture community on the periphery of modern mainstream medicine, whose practice changes in accordance with social changes. As a traditional medical movement, it has unique ethics that are constantly evolving. The traditional medical movement of a physical technique, which is known as "Noguchi-Seitai" and whose system and theory were established in 1927, passed through two transformation stages, one in 1956 and the other one in 1968. The movement become a community emerging concomitantly with medical techniques continuously alternating between a host and a guest, and the medical practice based on the psychosomatic transformations arose from self-training by the medical practitioner and the patient. Those transformations and generations are revealed from the conceptual viewpoint of "Education as Transformation" (Richard Katz, 1981).

Patients with Capgras syndrome complain that real persons close to them have been replaced by identically looking imposters. This syndrome is interpreted as the total replacement of the "haecceity" that is distinct from one's attributes. Capgras syndrome suggests that possible worlds around a person come in two different series: one of possible worlds in which the attributes of the real person change in a variety of forms with his "haecceity" unchanged, and the other of possible worlds in which the "haecceity" of the real person is replaced by something else with his attributes unchanged. Possible worlds involving these two series could develop without limitations, and hence impart unlimited diversity to the variants of myself living in possible worlds. Thus, the variants in possible worlds must include some who possess both haecceity and attributes that are identical to those of others in the real world. It can thus be speculated that others in the real world are nothing but variants of myself who have turned up in the real world from possible worlds they originally inhabited. In this context, it may be assumed that I am keeping in touch with my own variants every day here in this real world. In the real world, I myself always create a singular point characterized as "I," "now," and "here". In a certain possible world, however, another person generates this singular point. As a result, I myself become the other to him. Such worlds where I turn up as the other probably include ones whose contents are exactly the same as those of the real world. Because these worlds are perfect mirror images of the real world, we mistakenly assume that they are the same one world. Because of this confusion, we see many generators of the singular points coexisting in the real world.

Because there may be limitations in the scientific method of discovering and treating patients' "problems," the narrative approach has become increasingly important. These limitations have been pointed out by scholars from various fields. Hermeneutic view point has it that clinical knowledge is mostly based on the doctor's assumption and differs greatly from the world in which the patients live their lives. What should those in the nursing profession choose as a means of understanding patients? There is a Social Constructionist view that understanding is obtained through "language." When the sick patient tells about the world in which he/she lives in certain words, he/she has decided not to tell in other words. Then the patient's world appears before us as he/she tells. The patient organizes his/her world through telling as well. After over three years of interviewing with Ms. K, who was stuck with her mal-treating mother, we verified what telling brought to her, and how it was connected with understanding herself. Listening to Ms. K's narrative was linked to understanding her world in which she lived her life. It also brought a certain order to her confused history. As a result, her regrettable past came to have possibility for the future, altering her mentality so much as to make it possible for her to say "I have done my best" and "I have been living so well."

The medical staff of Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, Kagoshima University was considering plans to conduct clinical trials to test the embryos of Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients, but they were unable to gain approval from the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Groups and organizations that support the handicapped pointed out that there are problems with trying to make life and death decisions based on such tests. They argued that such testing implies a desire to lower the level of social services for the handicapped and to inflame the public's prejudices. In other words, the tests are considered as another example of discrimination towards families with a history of genetic disease, in the tradition of discrimination in jobs and marriage. However, as long as the freedom of the clients (the parents of the unborn child) for whom the tests are conducted is preserved, and their right to decide what to do with the results is protected, this reproduction medical technology does not threaten the constitutional rights of the handicapped, as provided in Articles 13, 14, and 25 of the Japanese Constitution. Allowing parents to decide whether to give birth to a handicapped child is not inconsistent with a policy aimed at improving welfare services.

We are afraid that our non-existence continues forever after our death. Lucretius spoke on this fear, stating, "Because no one fears the eternal nonentity which is in front of our birth, it isn't also necessary to fear the eternal nonentity in our after death," as a way to convince people to be rid of this fear. This statement is called Lucretius' "symmetry argument". Yet despite this, almost all modern debaters have insisted that the relation between pre-birth non-existence and post-mortem non-existence is asymmetrical. The main purpose of this article concerns the following two points about this statement of asymmetry; namely, that this statement is premised on a specific view of metaphysics and that the meaning of the claim of asymmetry must be examined from a viewpoint of metaphysics as it relates to time and the world. In this study, I first pointed out that the opinion of debaters included the assumption that we ourselves could identify non-existence. Next, I pointed out that the disputants would actually be insisting that the dead continue to exist in some form. Third, I examined which specific theories on time from twentieth-century analytic philosophy suited the disputants' opinion, and found that no ideas on time were entirely consistent with their view. Lastly, I examined non-existence before birth and non-existence post-mortem from a viewpoint of the possible worlds semantics of analytic philosophy. From this, both non-existences are located in their own possible worlds, and in addition to this, there is the real world in which the subject is alive. My examination concluded that there is a difference in existence qualification between a possible world and the real world, but that there was no such difference between two possible worlds. This suggests that the relationship between pre-birth non-existence and post-mortem non-existence is neither symmetrical nor asymmetrical.

The objective of this paper is to discuss the reasons that some individuals in the United States refuse to be vaccinated, focusing on those reasons usually described as "conscientious." This paper discusses current compulsory vaccination practices and the most common categories of reasons objectors in the United States give for refusing vaccinations (on medical, religious, or philosophical grounds, the latter two of which are often described as conscientious reasons). Possible ways to handle refusals are examined from the perspectives of the three categories of refusals mentioned above, the particularities of vaccination within biomedical ethics, and public health ethics discussions. Although refusals based on divergent perceptions of risk are commonly classified as refusals for philosophical (personal) reasons, objectors in this category are trying to present medical reasons, which do not convince experts. Even if experts try to persuade the public by presenting scientific evidence, there remain fundamental difficulties in convincing objectors. Refusals for religious reasons are to a certain extent established historically, but few major religious groups nowadays explicitly refuse vaccinations per se. Refusals in this category are not necessarily plainly "religious." Certain refusals on religious grounds, including those based on repugnance for the use of components derived from aborted fetuses, can be avoided by technological advances in the medical field. Refusals based on philosophical reasons should be handled in more sensitive, individualized ways than they are now. The inquiry ventured in this paper is important for Japanese society in that it deals with general questions surrounding the contradictions between the autonomy principle, which is paramount in biomedical ethics, and the compulsory schema of public health policy, and asks whether and how the different qualities or characters of decisions regarding health care and public health should be translated into practice.